“You have to force yourself to launch. That’s the most important, getting that out of the way as soon as possible.”

- Federico Folcia, Founder and CEO of Roomorama.com

Roomorama was founded on the principle that there is more to travel than visiting a checklist of tourist attractions.

As two young executives caught between professional obligations and perpetual wanderlust, Jia En Teo and Federico Folcia, former colleagues at Bloomberg LP,  would rent their New York apartments to a few friendly folks with a similar desire to live like locals. The proceeds in turn would subsidize their travel needs. That simple and effective method became a habit. But using classifieds to advertise their apartment -the most accessible platform at the time- took too much effort and, more alarmingly, involved too many risks: hundreds of responses to sift through; overlapping and contradictory requests; dubious, non-secure methods of payment and worst of all, no-shows.

Jia En and Federico quickly identified the demand for a service that handled short-term rental transactions quickly, easily and securely. Roomorama.com was launched in January 2009 and has since been a leader in the development of online rental communities.

Welcome to Startup Grind Singapore fireside chat with Federico on 19th July to learn more on how to identify a demand and build a startup from that.